


what's a little more?

by strawberry_sky



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Love, Nancy Wheeler Needs a Hug, Plot, Post-Season/Series 03, Protectiveness, Torture, don't worry the whole team's gonna show up eventually, everyone finally TALKS about their trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-07-20 02:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19984750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_sky/pseuds/strawberry_sky
Summary: Five months after the Battle of Starcourt, everyone has moved on, or at least tried to.Really, honestly, Nancy promises she at leasttried. It just turned out to be harder than she thought.So now, she and Jonathan are driving to Kentucky to investigate a potential supernatural mystery because that has to be better than sitting around pretending everything is fine. Jonathan's a little worried it could be dangerous, but they've handled everything they've come across before. Besides, they're just going to have a look around, how bad could it be?





	1. the first quiet fall

**Author's Note:**

> look, it's not that I didn't LIKE season 3, it's just that I feel like there were some missed opportunities. so that's what I'm here for. buckle up, everyone, it's about to get bumpy.

He recognizes her car immediately. 

It’s early December, everything in Taylorville is covered in a light dusting of snow, Jonathan just got home from an eight hour shift at the grocery store where he’s been working for the past month or so, and Nancy Wheeler’s car is parked in his driveway. 

Jonathan’s first emotion is joy. He hasn’t seen his girlfriend in almost two months, and it’s been driving him crazy. Taylorville may be bigger than Hawkins, but it somehow seems twice as slow. Jonathan’s mom is convinced that this isn’t a bad thing after all their family has been through over the past two years, and Jonathan’s inclined to agree. He’s just killing time and saving money until he can head to school next year—to NYU, if all goes as planned. But he misses Nancy, who is, or at least is SUPPOSED to be, already finishing up her first semester at Indiana University.

He hates that the second emotion he feels is a sudden dull stomach-thud of fear. Why _is_ Nancy here? She has finals in a couple weeks, she hadn’t called to say she was coming. What if something’s happened? 

The Byers family is under a strict “no secrets” policy—if Will feels that tickle at the back of his neck, or if El’s powers start to come back, they’ll tell Jonathan or his mom right away. So far, there’s been no sign of anything, but Jonathan knows all four of them are still on edge. If your brother gets kidnapped by a monster and taken to a shadowy alternate dimension once, it might be a fluke. When those same monsters come back two more times, you have to acknowledge that it’s a pattern. And you have to keep looking over your shoulder. 

So it’s with equal parts elation and terror that Jonathan whips his car into the driveway next to Nancy’s and jumps out, crossing the distance to the front door in a matter of seconds. 

As his feet hit the porch, the dread starts to subside as he hears El’s familiar laughter. Not an emergency, then. 

He opens the door and is immediately grinning from ear to ear as Nancy stands up from where she’d been sitting at his kitchen table and flings herself into his arms. As he buries his face in her familiar hair, he briefly thinks that even _if_ some horrible thing is about to happen, it might be worth it just to have her in his arms. 

“You okay?” he says quietly as she draws a few inches back.

Nancy looks up at him. She looks like she hasn’t been sleeping, but she doesn’t seem to be injured, and she smiles slightly as she nods. 

Jonathan leans in and presses his lips to hers. “Good,” he murmurs as they pull apart. “I missed you.” 

“I missed you too,” says Nancy, and leans in to kiss him again. 

Someone clears their throat very loudly, and Jonathan looks past Nancy to the kitchen table, where both of his younger siblings are currently sitting and smirking. 

“You guys done yet?” says Will wryly, provoking a giggle from El. 

Nancy glances over her shoulder. “ _You_ don’t get to talk, El,” she says teasingly, causing El to blush furiously and giggle even harder. 

Jonathan gently squeezes Nancy’s arm and then pulls away, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on one of the hooks near the door. “Mom still at work?” 

Will nods. “She’s getting a ride home from her coworker.” 

“Alan,” El says with the precise gravity that affects all of her words. 

“Yeah, him,” says Will. 

Nancy sits back down in her chair and takes a long sip from a glass of water. Jonathan, watching her carefully, notices that her hand is shaking a little as she lifts the glass to her lips. 

“What are you doing here, Nance?” he says, sinking into the chair opposite Nancy. He hopes it doesn’t sound like an accusation--he’s glad to have her here, really he is, but he knows her too well not to hear the things she’s not saying. 

“I just missed you!” she says, a little too brightly. “And it’s Friday, and I didn’t have a lot of work to do this weekend, so I figured I’d come down.” 

Jonathan doesn’t buy this for a second, and a glance to his left tells him his ever-perceptive brother doesn’t either. He’ll ask the real reason later. For now, he gets up and puts some water on to boil for cocoa while El and Will start peppering Nancy with questions about college. 

“What’s your favorite class?” asks Will. 

“I like my lit class,” says Nancy. “My professor’s totally awesome, she doesn’t take shit from anyone.” 

“Do you have friends?” El asks.

Nancy hesitates for a split second. “Yeah! My roommate’s great, and I went to a party with a girl from my history class last week.” 

El nods sagely. “Bitchin’.” 

The enthusiasm of the younger kids is infectious, and when Joyce walks through the door about an hour later, all four of them are laughing over one of El’s stories about completely misunderstanding what her new friends at school meant by “gag me with a spoon.”

“Nancy!” says Jonathan’s mom with a big smile as she drops her purse on the floor and holds out her arms. 

After that there’s hugs and frozen pizza and more updates on El and Will’s new school and Nancy’s college and Joyce and Jonathan’s jobs and comparing notes on what they’ve all heard from the crew left back in Hawkins, and it’s not until dinner is over and cleaned up that Nancy and Jonathan finally manage to slip away into Jonathan’s room.

Nancy runs her fingers across the photographs Jonathan has hanging on his wall, lingering a little on the one of herself from the beginning of last summer, smiling at something off camera. “I like your new room,” she says.

“Yeah.” Jonathan closes the door behind him and crosses his arms. “What’s going on, Nance? You’re upset. And you didn’t skip your Friday classes and drive all the way out here unannounced just because you missed me.” 

“I...could have,” says Nancy defensively, also crossing her arms as she sinks down on his bed. 

Jonathan just raises his eyebrows. 

Nancy sighs. She reaches up and pulls the clip out of her hair, running her hand through her own curls. “No, you’re right. I’m following a lead.” 

“A lead?” Jonathan crosses to the bed and sits down next to Nancy. “Is something happening again? With the...with the...”

“No! No, nothing like that,” Nancy quickly assures him. “I’m actually pretty sure it’s unconnected.” 

Jonathan frowns. “Then you lost me. What lead?” 

Nancy glances down, picking at the skin around her thumb. “I...saw something, in this obscure newspaper. A story about a town in Kentucky where there’s a group of men who have superhuman strength. And apparently they’re dangerous, but the story didn’t really go into why, so I want to go there and find out. And I want you to come with me.”

Jonathan furrows his brow. “What obscure newspaper?” 

Nancy hesitates for a second before she answers. “The Sun.” 

Jonathan stares at what is apparently an imposter who has replaced his practical and level-headed girlfriend. “The _Sun_?” 

“They’ve been right before! They were right about El’s mom, weren’t they?”

“That doesn’t make them right about everything!” 

“I know, but I did some more research, and I really think there might be something here!” Nancy grabs Jonathan’s hand. There’s a desperation in her eyes that scares him a little. “We can go check it out, see if it’s something that needs to be stopped.” 

“But why us, Nancy? Why _you?”_

“No one else seems to be dealing with it!” 

“ _Someone_ is, or it wouldn’t be in the Sun,” Jonathan points out. “Why should we uproot our lives just to talk to people who _might_ have superpowers?” 

Nancy lets out a burst of laughter, high and hysterical. “What lives?”

Jonathan stops talking. Nancy lets go of his hand and looks down at her lap. 

It’s started to snow lightly outside. As the only person in his family who’s never physically been to the Upside Down, Jonathan is also the only person who still likes the snow. Will and El and his mom always say it reminds them way too much of the particles that float around in the other dimension. 

Nancy blows out a long breath and leans back against the wall, rubbing her eyes. Jonathan scoots across the bed so he can lean next to her, and slips one arm around her waist. 

“I don’t mean that,” Nancy says after a moment. “Of course I have a life. It’s just...after you’ve spent the past two years battling monsters and shady government agencies it’s a little hard to focus on essays about Emily Dickinson.” 

“Yeah,” says Jonathan quietly. It’s a little hard to focus on scanning groceries, too. 

“Did you notice this was the first quiet fall?” says Nancy. “I told Mike to call me as soon as anything happened, anything at all. All November I was so on edge. I jumped out of my skin every time the phone rang.” 

“We were on edge here, too,” says Jonathan, thinking about the time that Will had been late getting home from school, sending their mother into a full panic, and the time El had called him in tears to come pick her up because she saw someone who looked like the government doctor who had “raised” her. “But we tried to distract ourselves.” 

“But at least you guys have each _other_ ,” Nancy bursts out. “I can’t get the way that goo-monster’s breath _smelled_ out of my head and I can’t stop seeing that black smoke coming out of Will’s mouth and I still think about Barb every single day and there’s only like a dozen people in the world I can talk to about it and Steve and the kids are back in Hawkins and your family is here and Murray didn’t give us any way to contact him and Chief Hopper is _dead_ and I’m all alone!” Her voice breaks, and she buries her face in Jonathan’s shoulder. 

Jonathan pulls her close, feeling her body shaking. He tucks her head under his chin. “You’re not alone now,” he murmurs, cursing himself for not realizing something was wrong earlier. Of course their half-hour phone calls full of carefully-guarded allusions just in case they were being listened to weren’t enough for Nancy. He’d taken for granted that in his house, hugs were given and tears with dried with no questions asked. That when he woke up from a nightmare and went out to the kitchen for a glass of water, there was a good chance someone else in his family was already sitting there. Of course all of this had to be so much harder to deal with by yourself. 

Nancy cries for about thirty seconds. Jonathan would have understood if she wanted to cry all night, but Nancy takes a deep, shuddering breath and sits up. “Sorry I got your shirt all wet,” she says, putting her hand on the damp spot on Jonathan’s t-shirt. 

“‘S’okay,” says Jonathan, studying her carefully. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are still wide and wet, but she looks less anxious and on-edge. 

Nancy leans back against his shoulder, and they sit there in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of being on the same bed as each other again. 

“I have to go to Kentucky,” says Nancy finally. “It’s just a hunch, but I have to check it out. You don’t have to come with me, though. I’m not planning on getting too close or putting myself in danger. I just have to feel in-control and like I’m _doing_ something again, even if it’s just for a couple days.”

“I get it,” says Jonathan, and he does. He’d be lying to himself if he said he hadn’t had some of the same thoughts. 

Besides, it doesn’t matter. He’d follow her anywhere. 

Jonathan turns over Nancy’s hand and traces his finger along the scar in the center of her palm. “And of course I’m coming with.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! let me know what you liked, what you didn't, what you're hoping to see! I have the whole story (loosely) planned out (the chapter estimate is tentative), and I'm hoping to update weekly or so until it's finished.  
> heads up: it's gonna get dark, though probably not much darker than canon does. and I promise we're going somewhere good and hopeful and loving at the end. there's just a lot of pain to wade through to get there.


	2. normal sucks, remember?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nancy and Jonathan eat breakfast, have some heart-to-hearts with the younger Byers siblings, and hit the road to see what awaits in Sallter, Kentucky.

They decide to spend the night in Jonathan’s room and get an early start the next morning, which should get them to their target--a small town called Sallter--by mid-afternoon. Fortunately, Jonathan doesn’t have work this weekend, and he can call in for Monday, which gives them three days for driving and investigation. It should be plenty of time. 

Nancy sleeps better that night than she has in weeks. She wakes up once, with a sudden jolt of fear as she doesn’t know where she is, but then she rolls over and sees the familiar outline of Jonathan’s body and the slight rise and fall of his chest, and she feels herself calm down. She tucks her head against his shoulder and immediately falls back asleep. 

When she wakes again, it’s to an empty bed and yellow sunrise light filtering through the window. Nancy sits up, stretches, and rubs the sleep out of her eyes, then swings her legs over the side of the bed. She can hear birds singing outside and smell coffee and eggs from the kitchen. After months of waking up exhausted in an uncomfortable bed to her roommate’s alarm clock, this is a welcome change. 

She pulls jeans and a sweater out of the small bag that she’d hurriedly packed yesterday after deciding she couldn’t handle the curiosity or the helplessness or the loneliness for one more hour. After getting dressed, Nancy starts to head for the kitchen, but lingers briefly at the photos hanging on the wall next to Jonathan’s bed. There’s several of Will, of Joyce, of Nancy. There’s also one of all the kids together, which Nancy recognizes from the day in October when they’d helped the Byers move. 

Most of them are the kind of pictures that Jonathan likes to take: the ones where the subject’s not expecting it, like the one of Will opening a Christmas present a couple years ago or the one of Nancy laughing at a joke she no longer remembers. But Nancy notes with some satisfaction that her own favorite picture is also there, the one that Joyce took after Nancy dragged Jonathan into frame with her and kissed his cheek. Jonathan always complains when he’s in front of the camera instead of behind it, but his soft smile in this particular picture makes Nancy feel warm when she looks at it. 

In the kitchen, Jonathan is standing at the stove stirring scrambled eggs around in a pan while El is carefully monitoring two toaster waffles. 

“You’re up early,” Nancy says to the younger girl, pouring herself a cup of coffee. 

“I’m always up early,” says El. “Will sleeps late.” 

“Mom left for work already,” says Jonathan. They’d told the rest of the Byers family a modified version of the truth last night--that Nancy was following a lead for a story she was writing, and that Jonathan was coming along to offer moral support and maybe take a few photos. They’d only left out the potentially supernatural aspect of the story, and only because they didn’t want the others to worry. 

Nancy and Jonathan eat breakfast quickly, as they’re both anxious to get on the road. El eats quickly because she always eats quickly, and soon all of the eggs and Eggos are devoured and all the coffee is drunk and Nancy is pushing her chair back from the table. “El and I will clean up, Jon,” she says. “Why don’t you go pack and then we’ll get going?” 

Jonathan nods, tousles El’s hair, and heads back down the hallway toward his bedroom. 

Nancy starts collecting dishes. “I’ll wash, you dry?”

El is silent. Nancy glances over to see that her hand is raised and she’s staring intently at the last Eggo on the other side of the table. After a moment, she sighs and lets her hand drop. 

Nancy grabs the plate with the waffle on it and slides it over to El. “Still no powers?” 

“Still no powers,” El agrees, chewing meditatively. 

“And how do you…feel about that?” Nancy winces a little as the words leave her mouth. She’s always had trouble knowing what to say to El. How do you talk to your little brother’s girlfriend when she’d also been through more trauma before she was twelve than you yourself will probably get in a lifetime, even a lifetime that has now included three distinct monster attacks?

El shrugs. “Things are less easy. And I’m worried about what happens if there are monsters or bad men. Can’t protect everyone now.” 

“Yeah, that is a little scary,” Nancy agrees. She’s acutely aware that she would be dead if not for El’s powers. And of course it’s not El’s fault that they’re gone, but Nancy’s not going to pretend that they weren’t keeping all of them a lot safer.

“Yeah, scary,” says El. “But it is nice to be normal.” She pauses for a second as she slides a stack of plates into the sink. “Like you.” 

_ Like you. _ Suddenly, there’s a lump in Nancy’s throat, and she’s not sure if it’s for El’s lost childhood or her own. She’s thinking about all the times she and Barb talked about how they wanted to be special and different, before they even knew there were monsters in the world. She’s thinking about how she tried to put her money where her mouth was, about Steve and the “party” and the safest possible rebellion and that damn photo of Barb by herself on the diving board. 

She forces herself to smile past it, to grab the first plate and dunk it in the soapy water. “I’m glad,” she says, and tries to mean it. 

Meanwhile, Jonathan is quickly rolling a pair of jeans and stuffing them into the corner of a duffel bag. Clothes, toothbrush, wallet, camera. 

And then, out of the drawer next to his bed, the gun. 

“I thought we weren’t lying to each other,” comes a voice from the doorway. Will is leaning against the doorframe, barefoot and in pajamas, arms folded across his skinny chest. 

Jonathan winces. “I’m not lying.”

“You’re bringing your gun.” 

“It’s...a precaution.” It’s not a lie, exactly. They’re going as a reporter and a photographer, they shouldn’t  _ need  _ a gun. 

Will shakes his head and starts to turn around. “Yeah, okay. Sure.” 

Jonathan almost lets him go. But Will is right. “It  _ is  _ a precaution, but we  _ are  _ going to check out something...weird.” 

Will lifts an eyebrow. “Weird how?”

“Honestly I don’t really know. People with superhuman strength, maybe? It’s something Nancy found.” 

Will is frowning, so Jonathan hastily adds, “It’s probably nothing.” 

“Mmmm.” Will doesn’t sound convinced. “Nancy’s right about this stuff a lot, though.” 

“Yeah.” This has, of course, occurred to Jonathan as well. 

He sticks the gun in the side pocket of his bag, then slings it over his shoulder. “We’ll be fine. We’re not  _ looking  _ for trouble.” 

“That’s the thing, Jonathan, you are looking for it!” Will’s voice raises both in volume and pitch. “That’s exactly what you’re doing! Stuff happening in Hawkins is one thing, but this has nothing to do with our family!”

“It doesn’t have to!” says Jonathan, suddenly annoyed. “Not constantly being in danger means we can look into stuff like this!” 

“But why can’t we just be  _ normal _ ?” 

“None of us are normal any more. And besides, normal sucks, remember?” he says with a weak half-smile, trying to make it a joke while simultaneously meaning what he says. 

Will doesn’t smile back. “ _ Safe  _ doesn’t suck.” 

Jonathan makes a non-committal noise. He’s not actually sure about that. Will and his mom and El being safe, that’s good. But what Nancy said last night about having a hard time focusing on everyday life after everything that’s happened, especially when there might be more small towns and small families going through the same hell they were…

“We’ll be back soon,” is all he says. 

Will lets out a short, sharp breath and rolls his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. Just be careful, okay? If you guys get in trouble...I just don’t want Mom…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. 

Jonathan looks his brother right in the eyes. “I will.” 

Ten minutes later, Nancy is in the driver’s seat and Jonathan is in the passenger seat and they’re pulling out of the driveway. From the porch, El smiles and waves, while Will, next to her, does not. 

It’s a beautiful morning, clear and light, and Nancy sets the car toward the rising sun. She glances over at Jonathan, who is staring pensively out the window. “Are you still sure about this?” she asks. “It’s not too late, we can still go back.”

“No, we don’t have to do that,” says Jonathan, still watching the quiet winter streets roll past outside the window. 

“But you’re not coming just for me, right?” She knows he loves her enough to, especially with as volatile as she probably seems right now. But she doesn’t want to just drag him with her if he’s not also feeling the same way she is. 

He hesitates a few seconds before answering, and Nancy’s just about to pull the car over when he says “No, not  _ just  _ for you. We just need a weekend. We just need to get it out of our systems.”

“Okay, good.” Nancy is relieved. “‘Cause things aren’t the same, for either of us, right?” 

“No,” says Jonathan. “They’re not the same. But after this, maybe we can go back to pretending they are.” 

“Maybe,” says Nancy quietly. She doesn’t think so. 

Jonathan reaches over and takes her hand, and she takes a deep breath and flashes him a tight-lipped smile.

They drive most of the day. The pensive leftover tension from their conversations with the younger Byers siblings dissolves after a little while, and soon they’re actually enjoying themselves. The sun is bright but not blinding, and southern Illinois is a long empty stretch of dried cornstalk tops poking out of a few inches of snow. Jonathan puts on the music he likes, and he looks so cute singing along to it that Nancy doesn’t tell him it isn’t nearly as unique or alternative as he thinks it is. 

They almost make it all the way to Sallter without stopping, but with only about an hour left to drive they’re almost out of gas and they both really,  _ really  _ need to pee. 

When Nancy comes out of the dingy-but-functional bathroom, she can see Jonathan filling up the car’s tank at one of the pumps outside. She grabs two Cokes from the freezer and sets them on the counter, along with a bag of chips. 

While the stout, friendly-faced woman rings her up, Nancy studies the map taped to the counter. When she’d first started looking into this story, Nancy had had a lot of trouble actually figuring out where Sallter  _ was.  _ She’d had to consult multiple maps because it simply wasn’t on a lot of them. But she eventually figured out where it was, and had assumed that its absence was due to the town’s extremely small size. However, the map taped the counter is a very regional map, with most small towns marked. And there’s no size of Sallter.

“Forty cents is your change, hon,” says the cashier. 

“Thank you,” says Nancy, accepting the coins. “Um, do you know this area well?” 

“Pretty well I think,” says the woman with a far warmer smile than Nancy would probably have if she’d been stuck behind a gas station counter all day. “Lived here my whole life.” 

“Do you know where Sallter is? I just noticed it’s not on this map.” 

Nancy points to the spot where she thinks the town should be and glances up to see that the smile has frozen over. 

“Are you heading to Sallter?” says the woman with a sort of curious caution. “You know someone there?” 

Nancy is taken aback, and makes the split-second decision to lie. “It’s my uh, uncle. We just haven’t talked in years, so I haven’t ever been to Sallter.” 

The woman visibly relaxes. She resettles her small glasses on her round nose. “I see. Yeah, real little place, not on most maps, People there like their privacy. You know how that is.” 

It’s a statement, not a question, but Nancy laughs a little too brightly and says “Yeah, I do.” 

“Anyway, it’s not too hard to find if you know where you’re going. Just stay on 449 for a few more miles and then hop onto 1351 by the big red barn with the flag painted on it. You’ll know it when you see it.” 

Nancy thanks the woman and grabs their snacks and tries not to hurry out the door. As soon as they’re in the car again and speeding back down the highway, she relays the entire conversation to Jonathan in a flurry of words. 

“I mean, that’s weird, right?” she says. “She tensed up as  _ soon  _ as I mentioned the town. And according to the _ Sun _ , it’s a small town, but not  _ that  _ small, not as small as some of the other towns on that map. It’s weird.” 

Jonathan keeps his eyes on the road and makes a non-committal noise. 

“What!” Nancy stares at him. “You can’t pretend that’s normal.” 

“It’s a little strange,” he concedes, though he still doesn’t sound convinced. “But they did just get featured in a tabloid, maybe they really do just like their privacy.” 

Nancy shakes her head. “That doesn’t explain why they’re missing from so many maps.” In her mind, this is the confirmation she needed. There’s something strange going on in Sallter, and she’s going to find out what it is. “But that is a good point. Maybe the ‘intrepid reporter’ cover isn’t the best. Maybe we should just be a couple on vacation.” 

“We  _ are  _ a couple on vacation,” says Jonathan with a wry smile. 

“You know what I mean,” says Nancy.

They theorize and talk strategy for a while. It’s going to be hard to strike a balance between subtlety and actually getting information, especially on their tight time frame. They might have to take a few risks if they’re going to find anything. 

Jonathan is okay with risk because he’s still skeptical that any danger actually exists, though he doesn’t tell this to Nancy. 

Nancy is okay with risk because she almost misses it. 

An hour later and they still haven’t come up with a solid plan, but what they have will have to do, because at the side of the road in front of them is a painted green-and-gold sign with a cheerful-looking terrier carved on it. A speech bubble extends from the dog’s open mouth, and the large words inside read “Welcome to Sallter.”

They’re here. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so that "once a week or so" posting schedule was obviously far too optimistic, but the more we get into the story the more momentum i'll pick up!  
> thank you all for your comments and kudos! truly they sustain me.   
> follow me at storybook-souls or drinkingdeadpeopletea on tumblr!


End file.
